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Criticism | A Lesson in Story-telling

A Lesson in Story-telling

My friend and fellow blogger Mitch Teemley http://mitchteemley.com had this excellent advice for aspiring writers. I include it here with his permission. Check out, also the links to earlier tutorial articles.

Experience is the most effective teacher (I learned more Spanish in three days in Barcelona than I did in two years of high school Spanish class). But one of the most interesting things about the human psyche is that we’re wired to learn from other people’s experiences, as well. There’s something divinely intentional about the way we not only sympathize but empathize with others, the way we “take the journey” with them.

Your job as a storyteller–as a fiction writer, or as an essayist or teacher using an illustration–is to take us there. Aristotle called it catharsis, our tendency to process or “purge” our own feelings by identifying with another’s experience. Joseph Campbell called it “the hero’s journey.” But catharsis doesn’t just happen with epic heroes (Odysseus, Frodo, Luke Skywalker), it happens with down-to-earth protagonists, as well (Woody in Toy Story, Pony Boy in The Outsiders). If it feels real, the reader/audience will “suspend their disbelief” (their awareness that this is not really happening) and “take the journey” with the protagonist. Why? Because we’re predisposed to go beyond ourselves, to vicariously experience others’ lives. That’s how we become fully human. (Hatred dissolves when we learn another’s story; it makes them too real to hate.)

So how do we as writers make this happen? I can say, “My father died of a sudden heart attack when he was 45,” and while you may sympathize with (feel for) me, you probably won’t empathize (feel with) me. Why? Because I’ve only spoken about the event. The old expression “God is in the details” may be truer than we think; it’s the details that make it live. When I wrote about my father’s death in Love. Before it’s too Late, I knew my readers would go there because I went there as I recreated the details.

Any emotion–anger, fear, frustration, joy–can be invoked with a few evocative images. I tell a humorous story about my daughter Beth in one paragraph at the end of How to Add Humor, Part Three. There’s just enough detail to bring the moment to life.

During the late Middle Ages, “morality plays” became popular. These were bare-bones stories with one-dimensional heroes whose sole purpose was to deliver a message. But when the Elizabethans, Shakespeare and company, rediscovered Aristotle, audiences quickly abandoned morality plays in favor of the cathartic experience. They were hungry to take the journey with the hero. And they still are.